If this were a slightly more pedantic movie, it could be subtitled “YOUR DRUG FRIENDS ARE NOT YOUR REAL FRIENDS.” Actually, I would pay for billboards that say that outside every high school and college in America. In addition to the moochers she gets high with, Lucy also has a girlfriend, the wilted but still potent actress, Greta von Something.
Patricia Clarkson is perfect as Greta, the shit-talking, restaurant-sleeping, world-slurring mess who’s got her claws in Lucy. I mean, she’s perfect full stop. Did you see her on Broad City? The woman excels at playing ruined women who she can’t quite do the favor of making tragic. I adore her. But Greta’s opiate-induced comfort is shaken up when Syd arrives at the door, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready to fix that leak.
When Syd sees Lucy’s photographs (which are gorgeous, by the way; I was always fond of the so-called “heroin chic” aesthetic), she immediately pivots to career mode and plots how she might use Lucy’s talent for her own betterment.
In no time, she’s setting up meetings with her editors, pressuring Lucy to take pictures again, and doing a little heroin herself.
She also starts flirting up a storm with Lucy, a development that does not go unnoticed by either of their partners. (Favorite queer movie trope: straight dude’s increasingly panicked gaze as he looks around a party and realizes everyone else there is a lesbian.)
Soon, they are sneaking into bedrooms and making out.
But Lucy is about to run afoul of her deadline and mess up Syd’s career (which, never forget, is her first priority), so the two lovebirds run off to an upstate cabin.
It’s there that Syd makes her first genuine effort to push back against the drug abuse that dominates Lucy’s existence, and I love the mixture of guilt and relief that gets from Lucy.
I’m not sure I’m meant to relate to either of these characters, but the truth is, I relate to them both. I’ve done shitty, ethically dubious things for my career that I regret and will always regret. I’ve also been so tremendously afraid of failure that I’ve made it impossible to succeed by surrounding myself in a shroud of toxic substances and people. I’ve been Syd and Lucy. Neither of them are shining examples of humanity, but they’re well-drawn, convincing characters.
